On May 28th, we gathered the Ukrainian startup community to celebrate startup success stories, offline….for the first time since January 2020!
The vibe, emotions and atmosphere of the physical meet-up of such scale and level cannot be translated into words.
Ukrainian Startup Awards 2020 is a startup community initiative officially summing up the highlights of the past year in the local startup scene. We are proud to include all levels of our local startup community in order to recognise the brightest achievers and most inspiring activists in 9 separate award categories.
We are also very proud of having built an outlet for the startup community to give back, and include more companies to the list of organisers this year: Restream - fastest growing Ukrainian startup, Vector Media - leading startup-orienter portal. We have also picked a new event venue: Kooperativ - a creative office space & Kyiv’s best rooftop for your Summer event. Believe us, we checked.
In 2020, literally anyone could participate in the selection of nominees. In fact, we received 638 nominations in 9 categories. 40 startups, organizations or founders were shortlisted, based on the number of votes, to proceed to the peer-jury voting. A jury panel of 69 startup founders, from Ukraine and abroad, was voting for the winners.
Below is the list of nominations, shortlisted nominees and winners:
The Impact Visionary of 2020
Winner: Mate Academy
Mate Academy teaches people to code from scratch and completely for free and takes money only after they get the job. 2020 Product growth: ~X3 in revenue. ~X3 in employed students. 2020 Investments: ~$1M. Global Mission: to help talented people across the globe to become software engineers, no matter of their life situation. Currently the student employment rate is 90%. Over a period of 6 years, 800+ Mate Academy's alumni were employed in the IT sector, 300+ of them - over a course of 2020.
This startup measures their success by the impact they have in the world and on the future of humanity. May it be in edtech, greentech, medtech — this startup had a breakthrough in 2020 in a field that really matters, with a novel solution that solves a real problem.
Nominees: Esper Bionic, Liki24, Carbominer, Mate Academy
The Stereotype Crusher of 2020
Winner: Alyona Mysko - CEO and founder of FuelFinance
Alyona has been working in finance for over 8 years as auditor, financial analyst and CFO, and built financial models and systems for over 200 projects. She founded FuelFinance, a cloud based financial solution for startups and SMEs 1.5 years ago, now a team of 22 people full time. We have quadrupled our revenue in 2020 with zero external investment.
Positive role models have a huge impact on the decisions our next generation is already making today. In this category, we're looking for road-pavers leading the way to more equality and inclusiveness.
Nominees: Victoria Repa - CEO and co-founder of BetterMe, Sofia Vyshnevska - Co-founder & COO of Propertymate, Stacy Pavlyshyna - Co-founder and COO at Awesomic, Alyona Mysko - CEO and founder of FuelFinance.
The Giving Back Powerhouse of 2020
Winner: Yurii Zaremba - co-founder and CEO of AXDRAFT
Yurii Zaremba is a co-founder and CEO of AXDRAFT (acquired by Onit in 2020). In 2020, launched platform with free legal documents for startups (became number two of most upvoted legal product on ProductHunt ever with 3,048 upvotes; number one - Stripe Atlas); Provided help to 4 startups to get Y Combinator interviews, 2 of which got into YC.
A person, even an organisation that gives back to Ukrainian Startup Community without asking. They have a passion and a mission that makes our startup community stronger; the impact of their efforts resonates to the entire society.
Nominees: MacPaw, Ukrainian Startup Fund, Yurii Zarembra, The Ukrainian Show.
The Foreign Startup of 2020
Winner: Bolt
Bolt offers vehicle for hire, micromobility, car-sharing, and food delivery services. Bolt is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia and operates in over 200 cities in 40 countries. In 2020 they have launched Bolt Food and electrical scooters rent in 6 cities of Ukraine. Currently, they have 90+ people in Ukraine, covering Operations, Marketing, Customer Support, Sales, HR, Admin teams working in Ukraine.
Many of foreign startups work in Ukraine. Their Ukrainian might not be perfect yet, but they are hungry for success when it comes to startups, and share their culture
Nominees: Very Good Security, SingleStore, UIPath, Bolt, Snap Inc.
The Hardware Comet of 2020
Winner: Delfast Bikes.
Delfast Bikes kicked off as a delivery company that pivoted into building electrobikes - first for their own delivery purposes, and later - for the clients from all over the world. Delfast Bikes bikes set the Guinness World Record for the longest range for an electric bike on a single charge - 236 miles. Revenue in 2020 grew up to $1.6M (3x times comparing to 2019).
Every year we pick one category of startups that is the trend-setter, that is booming, that showed exciting growth and interesting case studies. 2020 was AGAIN the year of hardware - new factories opened, funds were raised, products broke records! Who flew the highest?
Nominees: Deus Robots, Delfast Bikes, EsperBionics, Camtouch
The Wise Wallet of 2020
Winner: QP Digital
Fund size: $50M
Launch year: 2020
2020 total investments: 6
2020 UA startups investments: 6
Average ticket size: $500 k - $1M.
The best investors are team players, gate openers and bridge builders. They lift a startup with all their resources, including their connections and know-how, giving meaning to the phrase "Smart Money". We're hoping to see at least 2 investments in 2020 from all nominees.
Nominees: GR Capital, Genesis Investments, TA Ventures, Pragmatech, QP Digital
The Revenue Hack of 2020
Winner: Preply
Preply is an online learning platform, connecting a global network of hundreds of thousands of learners with over 40,000 bookable tutors teaching over 50 languages. In 2020, they managed to grow 4x in revenue in just a year, overachieving all the objectives.
We're looking for revenue-making machines! They've hacked their way to success and shown us all how to make money as a startup.
Nominees: Preply, 3DLOOK, Let's Enhance, Influ2
The Big Bang of 2020
Winner: Reface
Product Growth 2020: $100M downloads. Investments: $5.5M from Andreesseen Horowitz. The team has grown from 40 to 180 people. Collaborations with Universal, Amazon Prime, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, JBL, Red Bull. 600+ medias (The Verge, Mashable, Forbes, TNW, The Sun, TechCrunch, Business Insider, VICE, Hypebeast) have made publications about us.
In this category we're looking for startups who did something big and loud in 2020. Maybe a pivot? A product launch? An impressive campaign? Or a new location? Their achievement impressed and inspired us all!
Nominees: Reface, Rocket, Restream, Datrics
The Founder(s) of the Year 2020
Winners: Restream co-founders
Restream was founded in 2014 by Alexander Khuda and Andrew Surzhynskyi. It is a multi-streaming solution that allows producers to analyze and interact with their viewers across platforms. The founders managed to bootstrap the startup in its beginning making it profitable almost from the start, close seed stage $4.5 M round in 2018 and announce $50M of funding on the heels of seeing its business boom 300% in 2020 to help fuel the launch of Restream Studio. The team grew to 45 people in 2020.
What is the Oscars without the Best Picture? The same as Startup Awards without the Founder of the Year. This person deserves a VERY loud applause by the end of 2020!
Nominees: Yuriy Zaremba, AXDRAFT; Restream co-founders; Kiril Bigai, Preply; Reface co-founders; Sofiia Shvets, Let’s Enhance; Alexey Orap, YouScan.
We congratulate all the winners of the awards this year! After all, the biggest Startup Award goes to the Ukrainian Startup Community, which keeps growing, having new faces and reaching new stars.
The registration for the 2021 Startup Awards will begin in November 2021…Stay tuned!
We’d also like to say separate thanks to the event partners: Eat-me-at, Massimo Gelatry, Jameson Ukraine, 2085 brewery.